GuardiaN announces retirement: "It was time to focus on something else in life"

The legendary AWPer is ending a career that stretches back to 2006.

Legendary Slovak AWPer Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács has announced his retirement, bringing to an end a Counter-Strike career that spanned nearly 20 years. He told HLTV that he intends to focus on streaming.

"The decision was not hard to make," GuardiaN said in an interview released by BC.game. "When you spend half of your life competing in tournaments and flying around the world, you get burnt out[...] it was time to focus on something else in life.

"I'm not sad, I've done everything I could in esports. I've been to Majors, I've been to Major finals, I've won tournaments, I had amazing teams[...] I've done it all. I don't have a Major trophy, but that's not all it takes to be happy."

GuardiaN also mentioned his favorite play of his career in the video, a 1v5 against fnatic in the IEM Katowice grand final, his favorite event, ESL New York 2017, and his favorite teammate, Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard.

The sniper began his long CS career in 2006 in 1.6, enjoying his first tastes of success in Source with Reason Gaming. GuardiaN solidified his legend in Global Offensive, earning a plethora of significant LAN wins with Natus Vincere and FaZe across 2014-2019.

GuardiaN played at 14 CS:GO Majors in his career, narrowly missing out on winning our game's greatest prize on three occasions, finishing second at DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca, MGL Columbus and ELEAGUE Major 2018.

During his prime GuardiaN was considered one of the absolute best players in the world, his unbelievably consistent AWPing earning him six mentions on HLTV's Top 20 Players list, peaking at 2nd in 2015.

In recent years GuardiaN has been playing in lower-tier teams like Sampi and BC.Game, briefly coaching the latter in 2024.

HLTV Top 20 appearances

2013 - #10
2014 - #11
2015 - #2
2016 - #17
2017 - #9
2018 - #11

Notable LANs won

SLTV StarSeries IX Finals
Game Show Season 1 Finals (MVP)
ESL Pro League Winter 14/15 Finals (MVP)
SLTV StarSeries XIII Finals (MVP)
ESWC 2015 (MVP)
IEM San Jose 2015 (MVP)
DreamHack Open Leipzig 2016
Counter Pit League Season 2 Finals (MVP)
ESL One New York 2016
ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2017
ESL One New York 2017
ECS Season 4 Finals
IEM Sydney 2018 (MVP)
ESL One Belo Horizonte 2018
EPICENTER 2018
ELEAGUE CS:GO Invitational 2019 (MVP)
BLAST Pro Series Miami 2019

Notable Major finishes

DreamHack Winter 2014 (3-4th)
DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca (2nd)
MLG Columbus 2016 (2nd)
ELEAGUE Major 2018 (2nd) (EVP)